Chapter 77: A Dream or Realty? (Filler Chap)

"Wake up dumbass! We're gonna be late to campus if you keep sleeping like this, Ray!"

"Shut up Elric… It's the end of the year anyway, not like we are having any class. Didn't matter if we were late. Gimme 5 more minutes." Ray grumbled before he looked at his 4 year long best friend that that is his brother in all but blood.

"Yeah, but our next door classmates said there's something important that our lecturers are gonna inform us." His friend insisted while pulling out a set of outfit for Ray before carrying Ray on his shoulder, tired of his excuses to not leave the bed.

"We gotta go now, you can change in the car." Elric said before he sped out of their hostel and into his car before both of them sped into the road and to the hostel.

Ray begrudgingly changes his clothes in an uncomfortable position while the car is shaking like crazy because of how reckless his bro is driving the car.

"Chill dude, we're gonna die before we reach the campus if you drive like this dude." Ray shouted to his friend while trying to slip into his jeans but having a hard time because of the car shaking too much.

"Hey, are you listening to me? Those bitches probably just joking to make you panic like always… Hey? Elric!" Ray called but his friend was weirdly unresponsive other than to keep driving the car until the car went to a complete brake and here he was, on the campus that he remembered should take longer time to arrive than a minute or two since it was 4 miles away from the hostel.

"Come on Ray, be quick! We're gonna be late if you keep dallying." Elric said before he sprinted to the campus.

Ray looks at his friend's weird behaviour as he would respond if he talks to him unlike usual. He knew for sure he and his buddy aren't exactly the students that care about class and being punctual. For him to be this hurry made him feel weird but also something keep convincing him everything is normal.

He looks at the parking lot which is almost devoid of cars where usually even having a parking space unoccupied is already a miracle. There is absolutely no soul on the street, not even the occasional stray cats that he likes to feed and pet if he has time. There were vehicles on the road but all the glass was tinted black.

"Weird… did I drink too much last night after the final exam?" Ray asked himself before shrugging and entering the campus and to the auditorium where the students will usually gather if the campus staff or lecturers have something to announce.

On his way in, the hallway is also devoid of any students. Ray shrugged again thinking that everyone probably gathered in the auditorium already. He walked faster through the long hallway since the auditorium is located on the other side of the campus's entrance.

"Yo, Ray! Hold on a minute man. Yo, listen to me. This world is a lie. Don't listen to anyone. Remember what I said. Don't listen to anyone." A slightly chubby man walked up to Ray with an exhausted look and had a dead serious expression on his face.

"George? New conspiracy theories again? Or was it more of those fake supernatural videos again?" Ray joked while tapping his close friend's shoulder. His friend however still has the serious look on his face despite Ray thinking he is acting weird again like usual as those weird conspiracy enthusiasts.

"Listen, Ray. I don't have much time left. They are doing something to us. They got the others and almost got me. They want something from you and they want it real bad. Promise me, man. Don't listen to anyone, they are no more than husk taken by those things. I gotta go man. They got me and I would rather go down on my own than get possesed by those things." His friend said while clutching his left abdomen with a terrified look that morphed into acceptance as he ran away to the stairs, heading to the upper floors.

"I wonder what kind of pranks they are planning again. *Sigh* Last time they faked a zombie apocalypse, what now? An alien invasion?" Ray mumbled before he went to the entrance of the auditorium.

Unlike what he expected, what is behind the door isn't the auditorium. Instead it was the assembly hall from his primary school. Ray feels creeped out and has goosebumps.

"The heck is happening?" Ray said with a calm tone but on the inside he is already panicking and his heartbeat raced very fast that the beat is audible to him right now.

"Ray! What are you doing there? Run quickly idiot."

"Ben? I thought you moved to another state. What are you doing here?" Ray asked his childhood friend that he never got a chance to meet because he moved to another state after his dad got a job promotion after he finished primary school.

"We got no time for this Ray! Run! They are killing the students and soon us if we don't move now, idiot!" Ben shouted as he pointed behind Ray which was a flood of demonic looking humans running toward the assembly hall.

"What the f-"

"Fuck later! We run now idiot!" Ben said and pulled the stunned Ray. They run up to the sound room which is connected to the teachers office which serves as another entrance to the assembly hall. Ben shuts the door and locks it before continuing running with Ray.

Ray immediately ran out of breath and gasped for air and his concerned friend was looking back at him and sighed. Ray becomes slower and more sluggish as his lungs desperately sucking in more air.

"Ray, we have to be quick. Just endure it for a bit more. Once we reach class 6 on the fifth floor, we are going to be safe." Ben said before he continued pulling Ray along and climbed the stairs up from the teachers office, and to a bridge that connected to the building on the other side which was the building dedicated for classes.

"K-... Okay." Ray replied while wheezing for air and followed Ben. However, he suddenly noticed his hand was smaller. His body shrinked and his clothes changed. He is now wearing his primary school uniform and his body shrinked to when he was 11 years old.

"What the fuck is happening to me?!" Ray exclaimed in panic.

"We talk later, Ray. We must get to safety first. Those things are coming for us and they are going to kill us if we don't get to class 6-D." Ben urges as he pushes Ray up the stairs and shuts the bottom gates to deny access to the stairs.

Ray nodded any force his tired leg to climb as the terrifying demonic humans is enough to make him go even further than his limit. His leg felt like snapping but he climbed. He persisted regardless and finally reached the fifth floors and exited near the class 6-A.

"Ben?" Ray called his friend but he could see even the single hair of Ben. He was too focused on climbing the stairs.

"Ben? Ben!" Ray shouted but Ben was nowhere to be seen. He wanted to go down the stairs to find Ben but he was interrupted.

"Shut up Raymond. You are causing interruption to other students. Also, it's 7:20 am. You are 20 minutes late for the first period." A woman dressed like a teacher said to Ray and scolded him.

"You will report yourself to the principal office during break time with me. Do you understand?" The teacher said.

"Yes, teacher. I understand…" Ray replied because he didn't want to stay any longer with the clearly angry teacher and walk to his class at 6-D, the last class of this floor to the left.

"*Sigh* I was late again… almost everyd- wait a minute… wasn't I running from something just now?" Ray was walking toward his class before he remembered something but couldn't recall it fully.

Then he heard a sudden sound of thunder that shocked him and made him look left of the school balcony which was the field and another building on the other side of the field. The sky is darkened and a fierce thunderstorm is happening in the sky. When the lightning strikes, Ray can see shadows of a large serpent-like being in the cloud that terrified him enough to run to his class.

The class is abandoned when he reaches it. Thick layer of dust caked the messy tables and chairs. Some glass on the window shattered and littered the floor near the window. Light didn't work anymore and the whole class was dark just like outside.

Panic, confusion and many more emotions are swirling in his head. He ran out to check on the next class. What he saw was the same as his own class. He then went to the class 6-A where he previously saw a teacher and many students. But it is also empty. He looked out at the other buildings from above this 5 floors building and what he saw shocked him.

All the other buildings are dilapidated. The road is no longer there and covered with vegetation. Massive trees he can see in the distance that reach above the cloud. Ray felt his leg become weak and fell to his butt. Nothing is logical anymore, his brain couldn't understand anything.

Then he remembered a sentence. He remembered being told to reach class 6-D. Ray wobbly stood up and walked back to the last class and saw a door in the class which is a storage room for each last class of each floor. The door was locked when he tried to open it and he suddenly remembered the key was in the teacher's desk drawer.

Ray quickly went to grab the key before opening the storage room. When it was opened, he saw a few skeletons in the empty storage room, caked with a thick layer of dust. His visibility is low but when another lightning strikes, the window on the wall allows light to briefly shine on one of the skeletons and Ray manages to read the name on the skeleton's uniform. The name tag of the skeleton's uniform is Raymond Arwina.

Ray was shocked but he calmed down immediately after remembering his name ended with Angelo, not Arwina. He then sighed. Everything didn't make any sense. He takes a seat on the dusty chair and rests on his back on the chair. But… his back didn't feel the smooth plastic surface of the chair but he instead felt weird almost round objects on his back which was weird. Unconsciously he touched his shoulder and felt a rope but wet and slimy surface. He felt a goosebumps and grabbed the thing before yanking it off him.

"What the fuck!" Ray shouted in terror because the things hanging on his back is multiple heads with eyes and mouth stitched shut. There is heads of his friends that he met along the way here but somehow forgot about them one by one.

Then a flash that followed by a loud thunder roared brought Ray out of his deep thoughts and also the sound of something heavy stomped a cement floor. Ray instantly turns back and looks outside. The sound clearly is from outside. The thump becomes closer and Ray can feel his heartbeat increasing rapidly. He was afraid, terrified, overwhelmed and more. He looks out and sees a large 3 meter tall statue-like creature with a cow head, wearing ancient chinese armor that covers its body and a chained flail.

"A sinner will not escape from hell. We will hunt you down relentlessly until your evil karma is paid." The stat- no, the creature talked before using its flail to attack Ray. It swung its flail which the chain extended endlessly until it impacted the wall. Ray peeked just now and blew everything apart.

There is no word needed as Ray runs out and fortunately the other stairs are just next to his class and he runs down the stairs to run from that thing. When he reached the bottom, the steel gate that closed the stair was locked but thankfully the thing was slow. Ray had no choice but jumped from the second floor to one of the decoration hedges below. He only suffered light bruises and multiple small scratches.

The creature apparently had the same idea and jumped off the third floor and landed very close to Ray. He didn't have time to nurse his bruises and scratches as he immediately starts to run but his attempt is futile because the creature did something that caused the black demonic humans that when looked closely is just a very deformed human covered in black miasmic aura.

"There is no escape, sinner. In the realm of hell, no one can escape the authority of King Yama and his enforcers like me." The cow headed creature said to the cornered Ray and pulled out a chained spike. The creature didn't hesitate as it plunged the chained spike to Ray's chest.

Ray closed his eyes shut and waited for the pain of being stabbed with a rusted metal spike but the pain never came. He instead felt a warm feeling covering his body. When he opened his eyes to see what happened, he saw the cow headed creature covering its eyes from a bright light sourced from him. A swirl of black and white light wisp orbiting him, forming a defensive barrier.

"This… impossible… the ghost officers Black and White Impermanence…" The cow headed creature immediately kneels one leg down and offers a gesture of respect to the deities higher in rank than itself

"You will release our contractor, O, Ox-Head guard of Hell's Gate. He is neither the soul you seek for nor a resident of this universe. His existence here is fleeting and a plot of your real target to pin my contractor with his sin. In exchange, I will personally deliver your target in exchange for you to release our contractor and guarantee his safety while in this realm." The wisps said to the cow headed creature that immediately lowered its head even further.

"This lowly guard do not dare, ghost officers Impermanence. This one will guarantee the safety of your contractor indefinitely with the highest hospitality this lowly one can afford."

"Your hospitality is unnecessary, my contractor will depart from this universe immediately. The Black Celestial Dragon God above is also seeking for her contractor. You are lucky her contractor still breathes or she would have destroyed this universe in her rampage."

If the cow headed creature previously sweated out droplets, now it literally sweating like someone poured a bucket of water above its head. All this time it isn't playing with fire but instead giving a love tap on a nuclear warhead with a damn sledgehammer. King Yama? Jade Emperor? They are nothing but tiny critters in Ophis's eyes.

"This lowly one thanks the ghost officers Impermanence for this enlightenment." The cow headed creature said before retreating immediately while the Black Impermanence went to uphold his promise while the White one attracted Ophis's attention by breaking the concealment on Ray's soul.

The distraught serpentine dragon above immediately disappeared and a little girl with long black hair and gothic loli outfit with the iconic crossed plaster on both her nipples. She descended from the sky and hugged Ray and called him papa but Ray with his memories sealed to age of 11 was confused why a girl almost his age is calling him her father but she looks cute, so he didn't deny the hug.

He instead enjoyed the hug very much which calmed him after all these traumatic events that made zero sense to him at all. The hug was very comfy that it made him forget everything but actually was the effect of him finally waking up to reality.

Ophis finally returned from her other dimensional adventure to recover Ray's soul that got ensnared when he went into a dream and felt by Ophis that immediately went to rescue him.

———

"Kalawarna?" Ray said after seeing her face above his, when he woke up.

"I would say good morning but now it is still 10 pm."

"10 pm?" Ray replied and checked the time to see 10:07 pm on his UI.

"Then, let's sleep some more. I had a weirdest dream just now and I still feel tired after all that sleep just now." Ray mumbled and turned his body to push Kalawarna down to the bed and hug her while he tried to continue sleeping.

Kalawarna didn't mind either because she knew she messed up Ray's sleep just now by using nightmare sleep magic on him instead of normal one. Though, what she didn't know is that the mistake wasn't an accident and was caused on purpose by someone.

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(I had no idea what to write, so I made a filler chapter.)